


Terrible Things

by Jamilton_and_Lams



Series: inspired by songs [1]
Category: Hamilton - Miranda
Genre: AU! Eliza is dead, Alexander is emotional, Angst, By Mayday Parade, Complete, Eliza is dead, F/M, I'm Sorry, Pictures, Really just sad, Sad, Short Story, anniversary of death, based off the song, i killed the majority of characters off screen, i was sad when I wrote this, lots of people are dead, polaroids, sad!alex, sad!philip, so i poured my heart into angst for you all :), story time, your welcome
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-10
Updated: 2019-01-10
Packaged: 2019-10-07 21:24:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,307
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17373566
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jamilton_and_Lams/pseuds/Jamilton_and_Lams
Summary: It's been 10 years since his mother dies and the night of the anniversary Philip hears his father crying in his office.cue story time and emotions





	Terrible Things

**Author's Note:**

> So i was listening to this song by Mayday Parade (whom i am in love with <3) and this song started and i was like holy shit i can see this so i took bits from the start and this was the outcome 
> 
> enjoy <3333

Philip was a child that seemed to pick up on everything. He knew his father wasn’t a happy man. He worked too much and often left him in the care of his Aunt Peggy (even if he didn’t need it - he was 19 god dammit) for two or three days in a row, that would sometimes result in her getting a call from his dad’s friend saying he had been neglecting his health again.

Philip liked to think he was enough for his father. That they had an incredible relationship, similar to the one they had had when he was growing up. He faintly remembered days sitting at the piano with his parents, singing and laughing, but they are often overshadowed by the days, the weeks, spent in the hospital.

It's just  gone midnight and Philip can’t sleep. He looks over at the pictures he keeps on his bedroom locker, him and his parents at disney world. They are all smiling and laughing with mickey mouse ears on. The second picture is of him and his best friend Theodosia. Well girlfriend if he was being honest but best friend first and foremost.  

He hears a muffled sob from down the hall. Wiping the evidence of his own tears away, Philip slips out of room and into his father’s office. He isn’t surprised by what he finds. His father - drunk, seated at a couch by the window.

“Come on Pops.” he calls in a tired voice. “I’ll help you to your room.”

His father didn’t seem to hear him. He just remained seated looking up at the moon. “Pip… have I ever told you how I met your mother? Or of our lives before you were born?”

He froze at the door to the room, barely daring to breath. “No pops. Never.”

A sad smile crossed his father’s face as he stared out the window, at the stars, and Philip felt his heart break for the man in front of him. The man he had been before he had retreated into the shell he was now. The man who now second guessed and disrusted. The man who kept as far away from love as possible. The man who never mentioned his wife except on the anniversary of her death. Philip slipped into one of the armchairs near the window.

“She was a wicked thing Pip.”  He laughed fondly, tears in his eyes. “She was brash, she was beautiful and she was so, _so_ brilliant. She could have gone on to do anything she put her mind to.”

His father pushed himself up off the floor and stumbled towards his desk, pulling a key connected to a ribbon from around his neck. He unlocked the bottom draw, and philip had to restrain himself from racing to see what was inside. It was always locked. He couldn’t remember a time it had been open.

When his father emerged he was holding a selection of polaroids. He walks over to where Philip is sitting by the window before perching on the armrest.

“It was in the middle of winter. The ground was covered in fresh snow and yet it wasn’t too cold. It was a warm enough night and myself and my dorm mates had ended up in the midst of a bar crawl along with the majority of our year. The college exams had finished and we were celebrating. The moon was out and we were discussing our plans for the future. We wanted to be remembered. We wanted to be heros. We had plans to take the world by storm.”

He smiled fondly and Philip knew he was thinking of his old friends. He knew how their story ended. That was one thing his father had made sure of. “We will tell their story” he often mumbled while drunk before raising a glass in toast to the empty room.

The men who fought for equality, for the freedom of people to marry who they wished, and how many they wished… for polyamorous relationships to be recognised by the law…  it hadn’t gone unnoticed. Three gay men, all so deeply in love with each other.

And the wrong people had noticed.

 

  * John Laurens - southern born and raised - ultimately shot by a white police man while he was walking his niece Francis home. Ruled as an unfortunate accident.



 

  * Gilbert de Lafayette - the french man who had fallen in love only to end up hanging from the end of a rope tied to a street lamp in the same place John had been shot. Ruled as a suicide.



 

  * And Hercules Mulligan - the Irish man who drank himself to death unable to continue without his lovers, his best friends, his boyfriends…



 

After the death of his wife the loss of his closest friends had left him disconnected from everything. He had thrown himself into work only to get lost along the way.

His father handed him one of the photos.

“The night we met” it showed his father and his mom- both so young and carefree… his mom was laughing at something his dad had said, evident by the small smile that played on his lips. Philip did a double take realising they weren’t that much older than him. Second year of college if he had to guess.

“She was the most beautiful girl i had ever seen. I didn’t actually talk to her at first. I had seen her standing by the bar laughing with your aunts Peggy and Angelica. I hadn’t even realised I had been glancing at her all through the night until I looked up and she was gone.” his dad smiled at the memory. “She had spotted me looking, because when I scanned the dance floor I felt a finger tapping on my shoulder. I spun around and there she was. She was wearing this beautiful sky blue jumper and she was smiling wickedly at me over her drink.

She ended up inviting me to dance, and after we danced we talked… we must have talked for hours Pip…”  His dad’s eyes lit up before they dulled again. His dad took another sip of - Philip took a sniff- Brandy. “I think it's safe to say I fell in love with her that day. She was smart, witty and she had plans of becoming a doctor. We exchanged numbers and the messaging never stopped. We would be texting or talking until 2am or 3am every morning and be wandering into lectures with bags under our eyes nursing coffees and sneaking off messages. It was everything I had never known I wanted, never known I needed.”

Philip listened as he stared out the window of their home. Out into the gardens planted before he was born and the one’s he now tended to. He remembers days spent in the garden with his mom, her teaching him the names of the different plants and explaining how to tend to them. He thinks of the book his mother made him, sitting on his bookshelf and smiles softly.

“There would be days we’d do nothing… relax by the river in summer, sometimes we would go swimming, there was long walks in autumn… we would skip classes to drink hot-chocolate in winter…”

Ashe spoke he showed more and more polaroids to Philip. The pair of them wrapped up in scarves and hats. His mom in a bathing suit. Group pictures of the pair with Aaron, John, Hercules, Lafayette, Peggy and Angelica.

Angelica… Philip couldn’t remember the last time he saw her. She left for England after the funeral and hadn’t returned.

“We watched the sunrise over New York city from down by the river on a spring morning. It was chilly and we were wrapped in blankets. That morning… that morning she told me she was pregnant with you” His father smiled at him and Philip could feel the tears gathering inn his own eyes. “We laughed until we cried and then…  I proposed to her on the spot, pulling out the ring i’d been carrying in my pocket for a good month.” A polaroid of a hand with a ring on it. A polaroid of his father kissing his mother’s slightly rounded belly.

His father layed out more and more pictures and Philip felt the tears streaming down his face.

Engagement party.

Wedding day.

His parents dancing.

The day he was born - him in his mother’s arms, a tired smile on her face.

His father holding him, the look of pride and love etched on it, a look Philip hadn’t seen in a while…

Pictures of Philip fast asleep in his mother’s arms.

Pictures of the three of them in the garden.

Pictures of him and Theodosia sitting on his mom and Theodosia Sr.’s laps

Pictures of his mother and father fast asleep on a couch with him nestled between them.

“Why have I never seen these before?” Philip’s joy and sadness was touched with a hint of anger. “Why, Pops? Why have I never seen all of these photos of Mom? Why have you kept them from me?”

His father smiled sadly, looking down at a picture of their wedding day, a newborn Philip- crying his eyes out- being held by his parents beneath an oak tree. “It hurts Pip. It hurts to remember all the good, because we didn’t get enough of it. Because the bad over shadows it. Everytime I try to focus on the good the bad is there… lurking in the corners ready to jump out…”

Philip was surprised. He wasn’t aware that the death of his mother haunted his father so frequently… daily by the sound of it… life was a daily struggle for him.

And himself… looking at the photos he could see the resemblance between himself and his mother… his cheekbones… the colour of his hair… even the small half smile in one of the photos was an exact replica of his own. From his father though… he had his eyes and his aunt Peggy said his attitude was the same as when his father was his age.

“You hold yourself the same way. You chase what you want and you use that brain of yours to get it. Your a fighter, Philip Hamilton… just like Alexander was before…”

His father surprised him, kept talking. “It was a winter evening when she told me. I think you were at a playdate over at the Burr’s house. We were walking through the forests when she pulled me down near the same spot I proposed.’Alex’ she said. ‘Alex I need to tell you something. I was at the doctors and they found something… Alex i’m sick. And it's bad - it's really bad…’” his father choked back his sobs.

“She told me how after a few appointments she had been told she… she only had weeks to live.”

His father broke down crying and Philip couldn’t stop the tears that flowed down his own face. He remembers the weeks spent in the hospital; the white walls, sterile smells, the wires and the constant beeping of the heart monitor.

“I am sorry Pip. I know I haven’t been the greatest father towards you. I worked long days to try and forget, I left you to more or less raise yourself with the odd assistance from Peggy. You deserved so much better than what I gave you…”

“Pops-”

“Don’t Pip, you know it's the truth. Once your mother passed, I stopped being a father, and i’ll regret it for the rest of my life. You didn’t deserve it. You needed your father and I more or less abandoned you with family. You will never know how sorry I am Pip… so so sorry…” He trailed off in tears.

“I forgive you Pops. I - I forgive you” he threw himself at his father, and was partially surprised when the hug was returned in equal force.

When was the last time his father had hugged him like this?

“I broke the promise I made to you when you were born Pip… I promised you i’d always be there for you. That you’d never be alone. That you’d never know life with an absentee father like I did…”

“We can’t change the past pops… only look forward to the future.”

 

***************************************************************************************************

Alexander looked down on to the couch where his son had fallen asleep. He can’t believe how blessed he was to have a son like Philip. A son so understanding and loving… one willing to forgive him for all his faults…

Just like his mother,

Eliza… his sweet Eliza.

Ten years.

He looks at the photos that had fallen to the floor.

Ten years of sadness and heartbreak. Ten years of isolating himself. Ten years of missing his sons accomplishments.

He had missed out on over half of his son’s life.

But that would change.

He looked down at the glass of brandy in his hand and downed it. That was the end of it. He’d stop the drinking. He’d be around more. He bent down and picked his son up.

When they got to his bedroom he gently placed his son onto his bed and pulled the duvet cover over him. He sees the picture out of the corner of his eye.  The trip to disneyland. The last holiday they went on together.

And the picture of Theodosia and Philip. He smiled. They were quite the pair the two of them. And they were so in love.

‘Maybe’ Alex thought, ‘maybe it was time to try again.’ He knew Eliza would be mad at this mess he'd become. She had always been so level headed. He knew it had been a decade. So maybe, just maybe something new would come along - and this time he wouldn’t run.

He watched the sun rise from Philips room. It was a new day.


End file.
